The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

?php
>

Friday, June 16, 2017

After the signing of the Oslo Accords and
the establishment of the PA more than 20 years ago, Palestinians were
hoping to see democracy and freedom of speech. However, the PA has
proven to be not much different than most of the Arab dictatorships

Under the regimes of the
Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, Palestinians are free to criticize
Israel and incite against it. But when it comes to criticizing the
leaders of the PA and Hamas, the rules of the game are different. Such
criticism is considered a "crime" and those responsible often find
themselves behind bars or subjected to other forms of punishment.

This, of course, is not what the majority of Palestinians were
expecting from their leaders. After the signing of the Oslo Accords and
the establishment of the PA more than 20 years ago, Palestinians were
hoping to see democracy and freedom of speech. However, the PA has
proven to be not much different than most of the Arab dictatorships,
where democracy and freedom of expression and the media are
non-existent.

Given the current state of the Palestinians, it is hard to see
how they could ever make any progress towards establishing a successful
state with law and order and respect for public freedoms and democracy.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza
Strip may be at war with each other, but the two rival parties seem to
be in agreement over one issue: silencing and intimidating their
critics. Of course, this does not come as a surprise to those who are
familiar with the undemocratic nature of the PA and Hamas.

Under the regimes of the PA and Hamas, Palestinians are free to
criticize Israel and incite against it. But when it comes to criticizing
the leaders of the PA and Hamas, the rules of the game are different.
Such criticism is considered a "crime" and those responsible often find
themselves behind bars or subjected to other forms of punishment.

This, of course, is not what the majority of Palestinians were
expecting from their leaders. After the signing of the Oslo Accords and
the establishment of the PA more than 20 years ago, Palestinians were
hoping to see democracy and freedom of speech. However, the PA, first
under Yasser Arafat and later under Mahmoud Abbas, has proven to be not
much different than most of the Arab dictatorships, where democracy and
freedom of expression and the media are non-existent.

The
Palestinian Authority, first under Yasser Arafat and later under
Mahmoud Abbas, has proven to be not much different than most of the Arab
dictatorships, where democracy and freedom of expression and the media
are non-existent. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)

If Palestinians had in the past to deal with only one regime (the PA)
that does not honor freedom of expression, in the last 10 years they
have fallen victim to another repressive government (Hamas) that rules
the Gaza Strip with an iron fist and suppresses any form of freedom of
expression and targets anyone who dares to speak out.

The Palestinians in PA's West Bank-controlled territories and Hamas's
Gaza Strip can only look at their neighbors in Israel and envy them for
the democracy, free media and rule of law. Hardly a day passes without
the Palestinians being reminded by both the PA and Hamas that they are
still far from achieving their dream of enjoying democracy and freedom
of expression. A free media is something that Palestinians can only
continue to dream about.

The Palestinian media in the West Bank serves as a mouthpiece for the
PA and its leaders. Even privately-owned television and radio stations
in the West Bank have long learned that they must toe the line or face
punitive measures and feel the heavy hand of the PA security forces.
This is why Palestinian media outlets and journalists in the West Bank
refrain from reporting about any story that may reflect negatively on
Abbas or any of his cronies. In the world of the media, it is called
self-censorship.

In the Gaza Strip, the situation is not any better. In fact, it is
hard to talk about the existence of a media under Hamas. Hamas and its
security forces maintain a tight grip on local media outlets and
journalists are subjected to tight restrictions. Criticism of Hamas is
almost unheard of and could land those responsible in prison.

In the absence of a free and independent media in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, some writers, journalists and political activists have
resorted to social media to air their views and share their grievances
with their fellow Palestinians and the outside world. But the PA and
Hamas have discovered the power of Facebook and Twitter, and have taken
the battle against their critics to these two platforms.

Posting critical or controversial postings on social media is
considered a serious offense under the PA and Hamas. The leaders of the
PA and Hamas accuse those who dare to criticize them on Facebook of
"extending their tongues" and "insulting" representatives of the
Palestinians.

In the past few years, dozens of Palestinian journalists, bloggers,
academics and political activists have been imprisoned or summoned for
interrogation by the PA and Hamas over their Facebook postings.
International human rights organizations and advocates of free speech
and media around the world prefer to look the other way in the face of
these human rights violations by the PA and Hamas. Moreover,
"pro-Palestinian" groups and individuals in the West do not seem to care
about the sad state of affairs of the Palestinians under the PA and
Hamas. The only "wrongdoing" and "evil" they see is on the Israeli side.
By ignoring the plight of the suppressed Palestinians, these
"pro-Palestinian" activists and groups are actually aiding the PA and
Hamas in their efforts to silence the voices of dissent and criticism.

The absence of international criticism allows the PA and Hamas to
continue their policy of silencing and intimidating Palestinians who
dare to speak out against the lack of freedom of expression and
democracy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Abu Sharekh, a prominent writer, was arrested shortly after he posted
a comment on Facebook criticizing senior Hamas official Salah
Bardaweel. "You are ruling the Gaza Strip with an iron fist and fire,"
Abu Sharekh wrote. "The state of oppression (in the Gaza Strip) is intolerable. You (Hamas) have taken the Gaza Strip back to the Middle Ages."

Abu Sharekh's criticism came in response to the electricity crisis in
the Gaza Strip. Thousands of families in the Gaza Strip spend most of
the day without electricity as a result of the power struggle between
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Last month, the PA announced that
it would stop paying Israel for the fuel supplied to the power plants in
the Gaza Strip. The PA's move is designed to punish Hamas. But Abu
Sharekh and other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip hold Hamas responsible
for the crisis. They argue that Hamas' corruption, specifically the
embezzlement of Qatari funds intended to purchase fuel for the power
plants, is the main reason behind the crisis. Abu Sharekh, in his
Facebook comment, pointed out that Hamas leaders have installed private
generators that supply their homes with electricity even during the
power outages.

In an unprecedented and bold move, Abu Sharekh's clan issued a statement condemning Hamas for arresting their son for expressing his opinion:

"We hold Hamas fully responsible for the safety and
health of our son and call for an end to the persecution of him and his
likes... We reject and condemn any action that constitutes an assault on
the right of our sons to express their political views, notwithstanding
the excuses."

Abu Oun was arrested for posting similar criticism of Hamas on Facebook. Earlier, Hamas also arrested
journalists Nasr Abu Foul, Ahmed Qdeih and Hazem Madi on charges of
publishing "fake news" and "spreading rumors." Their real crime: posting
critical comments about Hamas on social media. Later, Hamas also
arrested political activists Mohammed al-Tuli and Amer Balousheh for the
same reason.

Another Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip who has fallen
victim to Hamas's crackdown on freedom of expression is Fuad Jaradeh, a
correspondent with Palestine TV. Hamas security officers arrested Jaradeh
after raiding his home in the Tel al-Hawa suburb of Gaza City and
confiscating his laptop and mobile phone. His family says he was
arrested only because of his critical postings on Facebook against
Hamas.

What is funny and sad is that the Palestinian Authority, which has
been criticizing Hamas's crackdown on freedom of expression in the Gaza
Strip, has long been resorting to similar measures against its critics
in the West Bank.

The latest victim of the PA's suppression of public freedoms is
Nassar Jaradat, a 23-year-old political activist who was arrested
earlier this week for criticizing senior Palestinian official Jibril
Rajoub. PA security forces arrested Jaradat
after he posted a comment on Facebook in which he criticized Rajoub for
acknowledging Jews' right to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. A PA court
has since ordered Jaradat, an engineering student, remanded into custody
for 15 days on charges of "insulting" a top Palestinian official.

Last year, the PA demonstrated that it does not hesitate to arrest
even one of its own if he dares to criticize Palestinian leaders. Osama Mansour,
a senior PA security official, was arrested and later fired because he
criticized Mahmoud Abbas for attending the funeral of former Israeli
President Shimon Peres.

Such arrests have become commonplace under the PA in the West Bank.
Almost every week, Palestinians hear of another journalist or blogger or
activist who has been arrested or summoned for interrogation by the PA
security forces for nothing more than posting remarks critical of the
government on social media.

Palestinians were hoping to achieve an independent state of their
own. In the end, however, they got two separate states -- one in the
West Bank and the second in the Gaza Strip -- as a result of the power
struggle between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. But the real
tragedy for the Palestinians is that neither the PA nor Hamas values
human rights or public freedoms. The real tragedy of the Palestinians
over the past few decades has been failed leadership -- whether it is
the secular PLO or the Islamist Hamas.

Given the current state of the Palestinians, it is hard to see how
they could ever make any progress towards establishing a successful
state with law and order and respect for public freedoms and democracy.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10526/palestinians-failed-leadership Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

In the external sphere, Iran will probably ramp up its activities in
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere under the pretext of its war on
Islamic State terror, even where there is no real connection to its
terror, because doing so will suit the interests of the IRGC

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Vol. 17, No. 13

The June 7, 2017, Islamic State attack on the Iranian
parliament was the largest terror attack ISIS has perpetrated in the
heart of the Iranian capital. It was aimed at civilians and prominent
symbols of the regime.

The Iranian leadership and senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) officials lost no time accusing Saudi Arabia for the attack,
claiming that the Saudis had been encouraged by U.S. President Donald
Trump’s visit and his efforts to form an anti-Iranian alliance.

On the domestic front, the attack will add considerably to the
difficulties of President Rouhani. Elected to a second term on May 20,
2017, he dispensed campaign promises of reforms in the domain of
individual and citizens’ rights. The security forces will exploit the
incident to beef up security measures, particularly, though not only,
against Sunni and Kurdish minorities, and will crack down harder on any
show of opposition to the Islamic regime by the reformist camp.

In the external sphere, Iran will probably ramp up its activities in
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere under the pretext of its war on
Islamic State terror, even where there is no real connection to its
terror, because doing so will suit the interests of the IRGC.

In any case, it appears that as the Islamic State
continues to lose territory in Syria and Iraq, Iran will increasingly
find itself confronting the group both within Iran and along its
borders. That, in turn, is likely to further aggravate Iran’s relations
with the United States and with the Gulf states, most of all Saudi
Arabia.

Terrorist incident in the Iranian Parliament (FARS News)

A Blow to the Symbols of Islamic Rule

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the coordinated simultaneous terror attacks on Iran’s parliament (Majlis)
building and on the tomb of Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah
Khomeini. The group issued a statement in its media arm, as well as a
short video from a camera carried by one of the assailants at the
parliament. Indeed, it took responsibility even before the attack on the
parliament building had ended. The coordinated attacks killed 13 people
and wounded more than 40.

The Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency proclaimed the organization’s first major attack in Iran in several Arabic messages:

Security source to Amaq Agency: Fighters from the Islamic
State attacked the Khomeini Shrine and the Iranian parliament building
in the center of Tehran.1

This was the largest terror attack that the Islamic State has
perpetrated in the heart of the Iranian capital. It was aimed at
civilians and prominent symbols of the regime. Organizations affiliated
with the Islamic State (jundalhaq) have carried out terror
attacks against the Iranian Border Guard and the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC), particularly in the mainly Sunni-populated province
of Sistan and Baluchistan in southeastern Iran, but so far have not
attacked civilians. Over the past year, Arab separatist elements have
also carried out attacks in the Khuzestan province of western Iran,
which has an Arab majority and numerous oil facilities.

“Death to America, to Israel, and to Saudi Arabia”

The Iranian leadership and senior IRGC officials lost no time
accusing Saudi Arabia of the attack, claiming the Saudis had been
encouraged by U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit and his efforts to
form an anti-Iranian alliance. IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami
issued an explicit threat by promising “to avenge the blood of the
martyrs who were killed in the terror attack by striking the terrorists
and those who sent them.”2
The IRGC’s deputy intelligence chief accused the United States and
Saudi Arabia of “inviting” attacks by mercenaries within Iran.3
In an allusion to a statement by Saudi Crown Prince and Defense
Minister Mohammed bin Salman (who said Saudi Arabia would not wait for
Iran to take over Yemen and would bring the campaign to Iran), Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted:

Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to
our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat
of democracy.4

In a speech that concluded the Majlis session (which continued during
the terror attack), Majlis Chairman Ali Larijani called for a harsh
crackdown on terror, and cries were heard in the chamber of “death to
America, death to the Saudi regime”5 and “death to Israel.”6

The Islamic State Calls on the Sunnis to Revolt against the Regime

In recent months, the Islamic State’s propaganda mechanism has
stepped up its efforts to recruit Iranians with messages in Persian. At
the end of March 2017, the group issued a video called “Persia between yesterday and today”
in which Iranian militants call on Iran’s Sunni minority to form terror
cells and carry out attacks against Shiite forces. Persian-speaking
Islamic State militants (not all of them necessarily Iranian) describe
the persecution and the executions of Sunnis in Iran and urge them to
revolt against the regime, and specifically, among other things, “to
burn mosques in Tehran and Isfahan.” The video accuses Iran of hypocrisy
in opposing Israel since, whereas the Sunnis in Iran are persecuted,
the Jews in Iran live in freedom. It also says Iran practices hypocrisy
in its relations with the United States.7 Since then, the organization has issued several more calls in the Persian-language version of its magazine Rumiyah (which means Rome in Arabic). Rumiyah, also published in Arabic, Russian, Indonesian, and French, propounds the Islamic State’s prophecies of expansion and conquest.

“Persia between Yesterday and Today,” a new message from the Islamic State (Jihadology ISIS video)

Khamenei: Our Involvement in Syria and Iraq Prevents Terror

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei drew a connection between
the terror attack and Iran’s involvement in Syria and Iraq. He said that
if Iran had not been actively fighting the Islamic State in those two
countries, “in the heart of where the intrigues are plotted, we would
have many similar incidents within the country.”8
Khamenei’s words dovetail with Iran’s national security strategy,
according to which the country’s borders must be defended from afar –
hence its ongoing support for Syria, Hizbullah, and the Palestinian
terror organizations, which Iran views as a forward defense line against
Israel. The coordinated strikes in Tehran will likely have important
repercussions for Iran both domestically and externally.

More Trouble for Rouhani

On the domestic front, the attack will add considerably to the
difficulties of President Rouhani. Elected to a second term on May 20,
2017, he dispensed campaign promises of reforms in the domain of
individual and citizens’ rights. The security forces will exploit the
incident to beef up security measures, particularly, though not only,
against Sunni and Kurdish minorities, and will crack down harder on any
show of opposition to the Islamic regime by the reformist camp. Indeed,
the Iranian population has not yet paid a real price in blood within
Iran for the IRGC’s adventurous policy in different Middle Eastern
arenas. (Although large numbers of IRGC and Basij fighters have been
killed in Syria and Iraq, the Iranian population in the major cities has
not been harmed.) Hence, in the aftermath of the attack in Tehran,
criticism of the high price of this ongoing involvement may mount, but
probably will be harshly repressed. After the incident, Khamenei already
emphasized the need to fight seditionists in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere
else.9

An Increase in Foreign Subversion

In the external sphere, Iran will probably ramp up its activities in
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere under the pretext of its war on
Islamic State terror, even where there is no real connection to its
terror, because doing so will suit the interests of the IRGC. The Tehran
attack may afford the IRGC an opportunity to boost economic and
military assistance to organizations under its patronage and even to
dispatch additional Iranian forces to Syria and Iraq ostensibly to
conduct the “war on terror.” Furthermore, Iran may expand and intensify
its activity against the Kurdish organizations operating against it near
the Iraqi border and against the Sunni groups operating near its border
with Pakistan. Iran would thereby risk escalating the tensions with
Pakistan after some incidents along their common border in recent weeks.
The rise in IRGC activity will likely make it still harder for Rouhani
to promote his foreign policy goals as frictions with Saudi Arabia and
the United States, which also are fighting the Islamic State, are liable
to mount.

The Islamic State’s Next Target?

Since the beginning of the year, the Islamic State appears to have
changed its policy on terror attacks against Iran. For its part, Iran
has been fighting the Islamic State on several fronts in Iraq and Syria,
whether directly or with various Shiite militias as proxies. Iran,
however, has been allowed some mitigations because it is also fighting
organizations operating against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime,
groups that the Islamic State is fighting as well. It is also possible
that, as the Islamic State loses land in Syria and Iraq, its fighters
will make their way eastward toward Iran and Pakistan. Iran may be
facing a new and unfamiliar struggle with terror not only on its borders
but within its large cities as well. Terror of the Islamic State
variety will probably aim for a sympathetic response from Iran’s many
ethnic minorities.

The Sunni organizations (jundalhaq) fighting Iran in the
southeastern tri-border area of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan – groups
that are inspired by the Islamic State – will probably be encouraged by
the double terror attack in Tehran and try to step up their activity.
The double attack may also drive separatist organizations and various
ethnic elements that are active among Iran’s Arab minority, which is
concentrated in Khuzestan, to escalate their attacks on the oil and gas
facilities. In July 2016, the organization Suqour al-Ahvaz (Hawks of Ahvaz) took responsibility for an attack on the Bou-Ali-Sina Petrochemical Complex in Bandar-E Mahshahr. 10In
any case, it appears that as the Islamic State continues to lose
territory, Iran will increasingly find itself confronting the group both
within Iran and along its borders. That, in turn, is likely to further
aggravate Iran’s relations with the United States and with the Gulf
states, most of all Saudi Arabia.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism, and the
Middle East, is a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs and at Alcyon Risk Advisors.
Source: http://jcpa.org/article/terrorism-tehran-isis-intensifies-subversive-activity-middle-east/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Former GOC Central Command Yair Naveh: If the
disengagement proved anything, it is that terrorism has nothing to do
with settlements

Twelve years after Israel disengaged from the
Gaza Strip, Maj. Gen (res.) Yair Naveh, then GOC Central Command and
later deputy chief of staff, believes reality has proven the move has
failed to give Israel any security or diplomatic advantage.

The 2005 unilateral disengagement from the
coastal enclave saw Israel evict Gush Katif, a bloc of 17 communities in
southern Gaza, and return to its 1967 border with the Strip. As part of
the plan, Israel also evicted four secluded settlements in northern
Samaria. The move, during which 8,600 Israelis lost their homes, remains
highly controversial to this day, as many believe it is directly linked
to the increased terrorist activity and rocket fire emanating from
Gaza.

"There's no doubt that we weren't able to
create any sort of security advantage, neither in Gaza nor in Samaria,
Naveh said in a special interview with Israel Hayom. "If the
disengagement from Gaza contributed anything to history, it did so by
proving that terrorism has nothing to do with the settlement enterprise,
and by proving that an eviction of this nature cannot be carried out in
such a way again.

"There was no advantage to this eviction.
None. Zero. Nothing has changed for the better there. It had no added
value to security or to anything else. It was a frustrating event that
left a feeling that it was all for nothing," he said.

Next week, Naveh will participate in a
conference of coalition lawmakers who plan to introduce legislation that
would allow the residents of Kadim, Ganim, Homesh and Sa-Nur -- the
four northern Samaria settlements evicted in 2005 -- to re-establish
their communities.

Unlike the Gush Katif communities, which were
razed immediately after the disengagement, the four Samaria communities
were left standing, turning into ghost towns in an area that remains
under the IDF's control.

A bill to resurrect the four communities was
introduced during the previous government's term, but as it included
unrealistic articles seeking to resurrect Gush Katif settlements as
well, it failed to pass a parliament vote.

As the new legislation proposal focuses solely
on Kadim, Ganim, Homesh and Sa-Nur, its proponents believe it has a
good chance of passing its Knesset readings.

While Naveh agrees that Homesh and Sa-Nur
should be resettled for security reasons, he believes the resettlement
of Kadim and Ganim should be re-examined.

He further said that as a religious man, he
had deliberated whether to carry out the eviction orders and revealed
that even today, 12 years after the fact, he is still criticized by the
national religious sector for his role in the disengagement.

Mati TuchfeldSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=43139&hp=1 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

In reacting against
the previous excesses of state control, politicians veered wildly into
the opposite corner and lost their moral compass along the way. Corners
were cut in order to stimulate economic activity and maximise profits.

The accounts of the terrible fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower in
west London in the early hours of yesterday morning are unbearable. It
seems that dozens of people perished, including entire families. The
mind can scarcely process the images of trapped residents screaming for
help or hurling themselves or their children from the 24-story block of
flats in the desperate attempt to escape the burning building which went
up like a tinderbox in a matter of minutes.

The causes of this catastrophe are not yet known. Nor can we yet say who should take responsibility.

What is obvious, however, is that something was fundamentally wrong
with the way the building was constructed or the materials that were
used, in breach of the most basic principle of fire-safety that a
building’s construction must compartmentalise any fire to prevent it
from spreading.

It is also obvious, from what these low-income residents of the block
have said, that they repeatedly expressed urgent concerns about the
absence of adequate fire-safety precautions but these were ignored or
dismissed at every level.

We also know that building, safety and fire regulations were torn up
in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher’s government, a deterioration in
standards acceded to or even exacerbated by successive New Labour and
Conservative administrations.

In other words, from right to left the political establishment either
explicitly or tacitly agreed to let the market rip. In reacting against
the previous excesses of state control, politicians veered wildly into
the opposite corner and lost their moral compass along the way. Corners
were cut in order to stimulate economic activity and maximise profits.
The concerns expressed by the poor were contemptuously tossed aside –
because the powerless never have a voice.

And then people wonder why Jeremy Corbyn has struck such a chord.

In my 1996 book All Must Have Prizes
(now sadly out of print), I described how the politics of both right
and left had colluded in the destruction of a commitment to the common
good by elevating the free market in both the economic and social
spheres. An edited extract from this chapter, “The no-blame no shame, no
pain society”, follows below.

All Must Have PrizesThe No Blame, No Shame, No Pain SocietyIt has been a great mistake to imagine that the Labour and
Conservative parties have embodied opposing political philosophies. It
is more accurate to say that since 1979, despite the distracting
rhetoric of adversarial combat, they have represented but two sides of
the same individualistic coin. The left stood for egalitarian
individualism in the social sphere, for the doctrine of equality of
values and lifestyles; the right stood for libertarian individualism in
the economic sphere, for the doctrine that those who could achieve
wealth and success should be left alone to do so while those who lost
out would have to go to the wall. Neither stood for a culture based on
altruism, fuelled by a principled concern for other people. The moral
relativism of the left was thus the mirror image of the debased
liberalism of the right.

Some time during the 1950s, the political left lost its grasp of the
language of moral discourse. As a result of the rise of the
individualistic, consumer culture and the collapse of the Church,
altruism began to wither away and individuals handed over the duty of
responsibility to the state. In 1960, the great ethical socialist
thinker R. H. Tawney wrote that the world was in retreat not merely from
particular principles but from the very idea that political principles
existed. Morality that transcended economic expediency and the belief
that the ends didn’t justify the means seemed part of a ‘remote and
worn-out creed’. Tawney’s moral stance fell utterly out of fashion. The
view that character and choice affected conduct was derided. Individual
responsibility was considered of little significance compared to the
forces of economic circumstances. So ethical socialism was left
vulnerable to Marxism which destroyed it from within and laissez-faire
economics which assaulted it from without.

***

Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 proclaiming a return to Victorian
values. There was little sign, however, that she had any understanding
of what Victorian values actually were. The Victorians had achieved the
quite extraordinary feat of remoralising a society in danger of
fracturing under the double impact of industrialisation and the
shattering collapse of religious authority. It had pulled off this
achievement by rooting the individual very firmly in society and in a
moral ethic which started from the notion of the common good. As
Gertrude Himmelfarb has observed, the ‘self’ to the Victorians meant
something rather different from its 1980s incarnation. It was rooted in
the social norms and approbation of others, and entailed duties and
responsibilities as well as rights. By contrast, today’s ‘self’ is
narcissistic and does not have to prove itself by reference to any
values or people outside itself. For the Victorians, self-help was
centred in family and community; among the working classes, this came
out as neighbourliness, among the middle classes as philanthropy.

Mrs Thatcher, however, took on the individualist agenda in isolation.
In her hands, it became simply a reaction against the corporate state
and against any kind of collective activity at all. For her, the
individual stood in opposition to society. ‘There is no such thing as
society. There are individual men and women, and there are families’,
she once famously remarked.(endnote: 4) It was an observation which
revealed her confusion between the collectivist organisation of the
state and the normal relationships of a coherent culture of shared
objectives and endeavour. Her political project was conceived almost
entirely around a narrow, utilitarian economic model of human behaviour.

The result was an atomised creed which lent itself perfectly to
political opportunism, populism and consumerism. It was set up
explicitly around the pivotal figure of the individual consumer. It thus
promoted a culture of individualism that destroyed attachments and lent
itself to relativism, by telling everyone they were all equally
entitled to make their several demands. There would be no arbitration
between them from any fixed position embodying the common good, but it
would be left to market forces to determine which of these demands would
be the fittest to survive. Choice was elevated to be the sacred
principle of this religion of the self.

It was also a deeply philistine doctrine. It was certainly no
respecter of tradition or culture. It was, after all, a revolutionary
creed that pinned the blame for Britain’s decline on its institutions.
Hostile to privilege and deference and by extension to the associated
ethos of noblesse oblige, it was accordingly malevolently disposed to
any distinctions between individuals based on the claims of education or
professional training, and saw these instead as passports to
feather-bedding that needed to be scrapped. It was suspicious of all
élites as a conspiracy against the laity. In this, it had much in common
with the left which similarly despised British institutions, except
where it could control them, as for example in local government. So both
left and right formed unholy alliances to level down all such
distinctions and bring the élites to heel.

In medicine, for example, the internal market which transformed
health care from a service to a series of rolling business contracts was
introduced in the late 1980s with no trials and virtually no
professional consultation. And despite the ferocious rhetoric employed
to denounce its introduction, the fact was that the managerial left
loathed the medical profession and was quietly delighted with a system
that transferred the power of hospital consultants to themselves.

Similarly, the ‘cardboard cities’ that aroused so much indignation
among the Conservative government’s opponents were also testimony to
this unholy alliance. It was an article of faith among so-called
liberals that the disintegrating family was an unchallengeable ‘right’,
as was the freedom for paranoid schizophrenics and other mentally ill
people to live free of institutional restraint. The Thatcher government,
from the other side of the individualist mirror, cut welfare benefits
and hospital beds in the interests of reducing the reach of the state.

The result was teenagers who were fleeing from their fractured
families and mentally ill people to whom no hospital could or would
offer asylum living on the streets in cardboard boxes. Thus crude
populism marched hand in hand with egalitarian ideology. And as the
Thatcherite economic and political hegemony became more entrenched in
the national arena, so the relativists of the left correspondingly dug
themselves in more deeply behind the barricades of family, schools and
identity politics in the private domain.

***

At every opportunity, the government sloughed off responsibility. It
set up a vast and burgeoning quangocracy, devolving the administration
of government to appointed bodies or to outposts of the civil service.
The effect was that lines of command became blurred and it became
difficult to hold anyone to account for anything.

Government was in fact constructed on a pyramid of lies. Facts were
manipulated as a matter of routine to maintain the fiction that the
business ethos which now prevailed in the public service had brought
about improvements in public life. All of this contributed to an
unparalleled cynicism about public life and a collapse in the authority,
not merely of the government of the day but of the entire political
class.

If the style of government promoted a collapse of authority, the
substance helped reinforce the culture of rampant individualism. One of
the fundamental tenets of the Thatcher/Major government was that
individuals should be freed from constraints; they could only flourish
if the state was off their backs. Accordingly, deregulation was a key
plank of their policies. There was even a Deregulation Minister. There
was, however, no acknowledgment that a civilised society can only
proceed if there are constraints on behaviour, that regulation is
therefore a necessary part of life if a society is to try to avoid harm,
and that freedom must be balanced against responsibility.

Libertarian Tories, like the libertarian left, simply couldn’t
understand that licence was not synonymous with the authentic liberal
values of a free society. The unfettered market cannot produce a
civilised culture because it sets citizens against each other for
personal gain instead of working together for the common good. It is not
underpinned by virtues such as trust, integrity or altruism but is a
savage, unprincipled structure in which the weak are junked as trash.

The most obvious illustration of the pernicious effects of this
doctrine could be seen in the pockets of social devastation around the
country where mass unemployment had laid whole communities waste. There
was no public interest in the poverty this caused, nor in the depression
and other illness that followed, nor in the erosion of the work ethic,
nor in the destruction of one of the primary mechanisms for socialising
young men, nor in the creation of that new phenomenon, the
unmarriageable male whose prospects were so poor no sensible girl would
have him. The damage done by mass and endemic unemployment was
incalculable. Yet to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont,
unemployment was ‘a price well worth paying.’ The message from that was
that human beings were expendable.

This Tory ideology was a debased form of liberalism. It stemmed from a
reading of early liberals such as Adam Smith which had never been
applied so narrowly and in such a distorted manner, and certainly not in
the heyday of those Victorian values Mrs Thatcher admired so much. Adam
Smith, as we saw earlier, believed that self-interest was the motor of
the general interest and that the enterprise of individuals, when left
free of regulation, was capable of carrying the standard of material
well-being to undreamed-of heights.

But the Tory ideologues wrenched this doctrine out of its surrounding
moral context, ignoring both Smith’s observation that individuals had
to apply self-restraint to control their selfish impulses and his
prophetic fears about what might emerge from such an emphasis on
business. ‘These are the disadvantages of a commercial spirit,’ he
wrote. ‘The minds of men are contracted and rendered incapable of
elevation, education is despised or at least neglected, and heroic
spirit is almost utterly extinguished. To remedy these defects would be
an object worthy of serious attention.’

Indeed, the defining motif of the Thatcher/Major years, the idea that
economic self-interest was the principal motor of human behaviour and
that crude materialism was all, was a travesty of Smith’s thinking. As
long ago as 1921, R. H. Tawney had sprung to Smith’s defence against
the same distortion. ‘No interpretation could be more misleading’, he
wrote, than to present Smith and other early liberals as the apostles of
selfish materialism. On the contrary, they had been classical exponents
of the great traditions of English liberty which dated back to the
Middle Ages. The fact was that these classical liberals had been rooted
in traditions of moral authority upon which they explicitly depended,
and which made their concept of liberty —which had been, after all, a
defence against political and economic tyranny — into a noble ideal.

***

The most corrosive effect the Tories had upon the civic order was the
supreme importance they ascribed to business principles, which ceased
to be a means to an end and became instead an end in themselves. This
meant that values were judged solely by measurable outcomes. If outcomes
could not be measured, then there could be no value. So productivity,
efficiency and cost- effectiveness became the guiding principles of the
age.

Of course these attributes are important. But other values may matter
just as much, if not more; yet these were written out of the script
altogether. So those principles that humanise business, such as trust
and loyalty, were trampled underfoot in the rush to rationalise,
downsize and privatise. A condition of permanent insecurity was now
built into the system as employees were sacked or uprooted.

The rise and rise of managerialism meant a corresponding loss of
attachments and the erosion of professionalism. Trust, after all, lies
at the heart of the social contract with the professions. Employers used
to trust professionals to do their job properly and in return they
received benefits such as incremental promotion and job security. That
contract was shattered in the interests of flexibility, ‘choice’ and
above all the cutting of costs.

The result was the erosion of the concept of public service, that
transcendental value which acts as society’s invisible glue and which
embodies a civic version of the common good.

But because it is invisible, it didn’t figure in the brutal utilitarian criteria that measured value and success.Melanie PhillipsSource: http://www.melaniephillips.com/social-responsibility-inferno/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The jig is up.

It is very strange, but it seems almost everything in recent American political history translates out to the FBI not functioning as it should. While certainly this is because of a type of political correctness, it is proximately caused by the conscious or unconscious bias of its former director, James Comey and his being in denial of that bias.

The criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton for violation of the espionage statute was sabotaged by Obama’s Justice Department. No subpoenas were issued. (The FBI cannot issue grand jury subpoenas; only the Justice Department can.) This is completely not normal; in such a case the FBI cannot work as it should.

The non-issuance of subpoenas by the Justice Department cannot have merely happened, as if by some freak of nature. It is an execrable act that fairly can be said to constitute sabotage, and indeed if anything in recent months has constituted obstruction of justice, this is it. Largely, but not solely, because of this, the FBI’s investigation was a sham, unprecedentedly fake, truncated, and weird.

Then-director Comey should have made this public and most certainly should have resigned in protest. Yet because Comey did not, the fact that the investigation was a sham, that it was obstructed, if not in a legal, then in a descriptive sense, and that it was, yes, a fake Potemkin village sort of investigation was not apparent to the American public. Comey used the aura of the FBI to give the opposite impression. Certainly the media could have pointed this out, but it did not. Comey must have known what his actively going along with the program would mean: a fraud upon the public. He even went along with the program, as it were, by calling it a “matter” and not a “criminal investigation,” as directed by Attorney General Lynch.

Was he in active and conscious cahoots with those wishing to traduce our system? Let us be charitable and give him the benefit of the doubt. If not conspiratorially intentional, however, how to describe his actions? They were not lackadaisical. After all, if it had not been for Comey’s strenuous tersigiverations [sic] during and after his infamous press conference outlining the case against Mrs. Clinton, even that truncated and malformed investigation would have resulted in her indictment and conviction.

A review of other facts and actions of Mr. Comey can shed light upon his motivation.

For instance, he purportedly and infamously wrote a memo to himself concerning his meeting with President Trump. It is clear that the president did not obstruct justice; Comey admitted to the same. But why was there no memo regarding Obama’s attorney general Lynch’s directive to Comey to call the espionage investigation of Mrs. Clinton a “matter” and not a criminal investigation? And no memo regarding the refusal of the DOJ to issue subpoenas? This evidences an immense asymmetry in his mindset.

What of the IRS actively and concertedly targeting conservative groups? This is clearly illegal. (One of the impeachment counts against Nixon – Article 2 - was that he had attempted to use the IRS in a similar manner.) The object, let us remember, was to interfere in a presidential election. It is hard to conclude otherwise than that Mr. Comey’s FBI did not investigate this: the victims, it appears, were not even interviewed. In a world in which the FBI functions normally, this cannot occur.

Consider further that President Trump repeatedly requested Comey to tell the public that he was not the subject of an investigation, inasmuch as that was the plain truth and inasmuch as he was being accused and treated as being under such investigation. Comey did not do so. (See his prepared testimony to the Senate, “March 30 phone call.”) Yet he did go along with Lynch in not making clear to the public that Mrs. Clinton was under a criminal investigation. And his explanation as to why he did not do so is both risible and frightening: it would have, in his words, created a “duty to correct” should there ever be an investigation; but it is also indicative of a person straining to justify the unjustifiable.

There are many more such asymmetries in Mr. Comey’s performance and activities, but these will do. It is hard to do other than to draw the conclusion that he has great sympathy for the left, and an antipathy towards the right. This is untenable for an FBI agent, and completely beyond the pale for an FBI director. Which is why, of course, he is in denial.

It all worked for a time. Mr. Comey’s fevered gavotte of faux-integrity, his energetic denials of his own bias (he should have resigned on multiple occasions) was indeed part of the shield behind which the shenanigans were engaged in. It certainly did concerning the IRS scandal. It worked fairly well, probably, because it was in accord with the wishes of Attorney General Lynch and tolerated, at best, if not encouraged, by President Obama.

But now the jig is up.

We need two things. One, we need to have an FBI which is non-politicized. Two, we need to perceive it as such. One more thing would be nice. It would be nice to be spared any further exposure to the wretched spectacle of Mr. Comey’s attempts at justification. Enough.

Tadas Klimasis a former FBI agent, awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement (NIMA).Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/comeys_game.htmlFollow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Qatar's extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented.

Qatar's extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain issued a statement
designating 59 individuals and 12 organizations as having terror ties to
Qatar. According to the statement, Doha "announces fighting terrorism
on one hand and finances and supports and hosts different terrorist
organizations on the other hand," and harbors "terrorist and sectarian
groups that aim to destabilize the region, including the Muslim
Brotherhood, Daesh [ISIS] and Al Qaeda."

Ironically, pressure from this new anti-Iran Muslim bloc in the
Middle East has done more to call the world's attention to Qatar's key
role in the spread of Islamist terrorism than years of cajoling on the
part of previous administrations in Washington to get Doha to live up to
its signed commitments.

A mere two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first major foreign policy speech
in Riyadh to delegates from dozens Muslim/Arab countries, Bahrain
announced on June 5 that it was halting all flights to Qatar for being a
sponsor of radical Islamist terrorists. Immediately, Saudi Arabia
joined the boycott, as did the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and
Yemen, all of which also shut off access to Al Jazeera, the anti-American, anti-Semitic
Qatari television network established in 1996 and operating since then
to foment unrest across the Middle East and bolster the terrorist
organization the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and other
officials in Doha fiercely denied the charge that their government has
been backing terrorism, blaming a "fake news" report on the website of the state-controlled Qatar News Agency for the eruption of the Gulf crisis.

The report, which the FBI and other U.S. security agencies believe
was the result of a Russian hacking attack, quoted Al Thani calling
Iran an "Islamic power," referring to Hamas as "the legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people" and saying Qatar's relations
with Israel were "good."

Although the report did turn out to be a hoax, Qatar's extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented.
A Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) study, titled "Qatar and
Terror Finance: Private Funders of al-Qaeda in Syria," shows that while
Doha has pretended for more than a decade to be partnering with the
United States to defeat Al Qaeda, the monarchy, in fact, has taken no
action whatsoever against the Qatari financiers of the terrorist
organization's Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, which continues to plot
attacks against the West. One of the reasons that this group eluded U.S.
strikes operating in Syria was that it, like America, has been fighting
ISIS. Another was that it changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS
or the Front for the Conquest of Syria), in an effort to distance
itself from Al Qaeda. This effort was led by Qatar.

According to the FDD study, the second of a three-part document written by David Andrew Weinberg:

"...[I]ntelligence officials from Qatar and other Gulf
states met several times with Nusra's leader [in 2015] to suggest that
his group could receive money, arms, and supplies after stepping away
from al-Qaeda."

While the first part of the study, released in 2014, revealed "Doha's
dismal record" during the reign of Emir Hamad Al Thani (the current
monarch's father), this one

"evaluates the publicly available evidence on Qatar's
record since then, focusing primarily on individuals sanctioned by the
U.S. Treasury Department in 2014 and 2015. All of these sanctions were
imposed after Qatar agreed in September 2014, as part of a U.S.-led
initiative called the Jeddah Communiqué, to bring terror financiers to
justice."

Weinberg concluded that Qatar has done little or nothing to comply.
On the contrary, he wrote, "The funders of certain terrorist groups
still enjoy legal impunity there. Nusra/JFS appears to be foremost among
them."

It is just as unlikely that a single news item was responsible for
the banding together of several Arab states to impose a blockade on
Qatar as it is implausible that these states, particularly Saudi Arabia
-- which itself has backed and spread radical Islamist ideology
-- are holding Qatar accountable for its ties to global jihad. Equally
simplistic is the view, expressed by Trump on Twitter, that the embargo
indicated the seriousness with which the above states took his call to
"drive out the terrorists and extremists" from their midst.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no
longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar --
look!" Trump tweeted on June 7.

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and
50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line
on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps
this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

This prompted pundits on both sides of the political spectrum to
question whether Trump was simply being reckless in his response, or
actually announcing a shift in decades of U.S. policy regarding Qatar,
home of the Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Doha. Al Udeid is not only
America's largest military base in the Middle East -- with some 10,000
troops, but since 2003, it has served as forward headquarters for
CENTCOM (the U.S. Central Command), and has been crucial in America's
operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The following day, Trump was accused of backtracking, when he phoned Al Thani and offered to "help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary."

Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick pointed out
that this was not a case of Trump reversing his position, but rather of
proposing the most reasonable course of action available:

"With the Pentagon dependent on the Qatari base, and with
no clear path for unseating the emir through war or coup without
risking a much larger and more dangerous conflict, the only clear option
is a negotiated resolution."Under the circumstances, the best option for the US to openly work
towards is to diminish Qatar's regional profile and financial support
for Iran and its terrorist allies and proxies."

Nevertheless, mixed messages
appeared to be emerging from the Trump administration. On June 9,
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the blockade was hindering
U.S. operations against ISIS. On the same day, Pentagon spokesman Navy
Capt. Jeff Davis asserted that the isolation of Qatar so far has had no
negative impact on U.S. operations in and out of Al Udeid. "All of our
supplies are getting in just fine," he told reporters. "The Defense
Logistics Agency is certainly always looking at contingency plans if
they're needed, but for right now they're OK."

On the day that these conflicting claims began to circulate, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain issued a statement
designating 59 individuals and 12 organizations as having terror ties
to Qatar. According to the statement, Doha "announces fighting terrorism
on one hand and finances and supports and hosts different terrorist
organizations on the other hand," and harbors "terrorist and sectarian
groups that aim to destabilize the region, including the Muslim
Brotherhood, Daesh [ISIS] and Al Qaeda."

Bygone days of unity.
The leaders of the Gulf states pose with British PM Theresa May at the
Gulf Cooperation Council summit, on December 7, 2016 in Manama, Bahrain.
(Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

On June 7 -- the day of Trump's phone call and two days before the
release of the Saudi statement -- Qatar hired of the law firm of John
Ashcroft, former attorney general under President George W. Bush, to
help counter terror accusations. This clearly was a calculated move, as
Ashcroft had been instrumental in pushing through the post-9/11 "Uniting
and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001," more commonly known as
the Patriot Act.

"provid[e] the Client with comprehensive strategic
advice, legal counsel, support, and representation related to
confirming, educating, assessing and reporting the Client's efforts to
combat global terrorism and its support of and compliance with
international financial regulations, including compliance with United
States Treasury rules and regulations...."The firm understands the urgency of this matter and need to
communicate accurate information to both a broad constituency and
certain domestic agencies and leaders...will advance, advocate,
represent, and protect the Client's interests as necessary, including
but not limited to the development of comprehensive legal and government
affairs strategy, coordination as necessary and in the interest of the
Client, assessment of the pending news and certain nations' claims that
adversely impact the Client's reputation and pose serious risk and
consequences."

Hiring Ashcroft is not the only indication that Qatar is running
scared. Another is its leaders' simultaneous attempt to assuage fears
among its populace – reported
to have begun "panic-shopping" at supermarkets -- and threaten fellow
Gulf Cooperation Council countries that they will suffer severe
financial consequences as a result of their boycott.

"If we're going to lose a dollar, they will lose a dollar also,"
warned Qatari Finance minister Ali Shareef Al Emadi. Emadi added, "Our
reserves and investment funds are more than 250 percent of gross
domestic product, so I don't think there is any reason that people need
to be concerned about what's happening or any speculation on the Qatari
riyal."

In spite of Emadi's posturing and Doha's assertion that it is not in cahoots with Iran, Tehran announced that it has begun sending hundreds of tons of food products to Qatar. Oman, too, is transferring goods to Doha. Turkey went a step further,
authorizing the dispatch of 3,000-5,000 troops to its military base in
Qatar, to assist Al Thani's regime, should it be jeopardized by the
Saudi-led initiative and internal power struggles.

This unfolding of events is creating what Middle East expert Jonathan
Speyer called a "clear drawing" of the "lines of confrontation between
the two central power blocs in the region..."As Speyer wrote on June 10:

"The shunting aside of little Qatar... is ultimately only
a detail in the larger picture. What is more significant is the
re-emergence of an overt alliance of Sunni Arab states under US
leadership, following the development of military capabilities in
relevant areas, and with the stated intention of challenging the Iranian
regional advance and Sunni political Islam."

Ironically, pressure from this new anti-Iran Muslim bloc in the
Middle East has done more to call the world's attention to Qatar's key
role in the spread of Islamist terrorism than years of cajoling on the
part of previous administrations in Washington to get Doha to live up to
its signed commitments.

Ruthie Blumis a journalist and author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama and the 'Arab Spring.'"Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10530/qatar-comeuppance Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.